Resident Physicians in the UK to Launch Five-Day Walkout Next Month
Doctors in England are preparing to stage a five consecutive day strike in November, due to disputes regarding jobs and pay.
Strike Details
The BMA announced that junior physicians will walk out for five days in a row from November 14 at 7am to 7am on 19 November.
Junior physicians, who constitute about half of all medical staff in the National Health Service, are proceeding with the strike after unsuccessful talks with the health department.
Reasons Behind the Strike
The chair of the BMA’s resident doctors committee commented, “We did not want to reach this point. We have been negotiating for the past week with officials, urging the health secretary to resolve the crisis of doctors going unemployed.”
“We know from our own survey half of second-year doctors in the UK are facing unemployment, their talents being unused whilst countless individuals wait endlessly for treatment and hospital shifts go unfilled. This is a situation which cannot go on.”
He continued, “We talked with the government in good faith, keen for the minister to see that a agreement offering solutions to gradually reverse the pay reductions over a number of years, providing recent graduates a raise of just a pound an hour for the coming four years.”
“We hoped the authorities would recognize that our demands are not just fair but are in the best interests of the community and our patients and would also help prevent our doctors leaving the NHS.”
Who Are Resident Physicians?
Resident doctors have as much as eight years of experience working as a hospital doctor, depending on their specialty, or as many as three years in general practice.
Further information will follow soon.
